How fast can you bevel?

[damonw81]

Greetings from Indiana. Thanks to you all I took a huge leap and thought I could build a knife....and I did! Wow! Its not great but it holds an edge and is sturdy. Now I'm hooked and cant stop thinking about this stuff. Now I want to make some hunters for myself and friends in 1084: 1/8th" by 1.25" wide, 3"-4" long blade. The challenge, my setup is not very efficient.

When I step up to a 1 - 2hp 2 x 72 grinder and use a quality ceramic type belt how long might I resonably expect to spend on a primary bevel? (After the intial learning curve of course) On a flat platten or contact wheel? I'm sure SFM will come into play as well. What are your average pre-HT grind times for 3-4inch hunters?
For the hammer heads out there, what average time do you spend forging a hunter? I'm waiting on an anvil, but very eager to learn all I can.

Here's what I've done so far. My first knife, the 4in wharncliffe hidden tang with purpleheart/oak handle that is my avatar, took me almost 12hrs of hand filing and whetstone grinding to get the primary bevel set. Which seemed agonizingly slow. I didn't know about draw filing then. For my next 3 blades, 3.5" full tang bird & trout style, I took what I percieved as a step up and used a 1/3hp sears 4 x 36 sander with an 80grit Zirconia "gator grit" belt and spent between 3 - 5 hrs each getting similar results. Still feels very slow. This has all been using old Nichols files I have annealed myself, which are soft-ish. For comparison they tool almost as easy as the 1018 mild steel that I bought to build a tool rest.

In my searching I finally read about a proper way to flat grind by grinding the edge down to dime thickness at a 45 then backing off the angle slowly in suqsequent grinds until satisfied.... I haven't been able to try it yet. (waiting on a new idler wheel) What I have been doing is knocking the edge off to the dime thickness with a 45 but then setting my jig angle between 5-10 degrees and just grinding to the dime. But I still dont think, even done a proper way, I can get under two hours on the grinding with my vastly underpowered tool. I will step up to an actual grinder, but want to know what kind of time benchmark to shoot for before heat treatment. I think 30 minutes would be great.

If anything seems glaringly wrong, or too far out there, let me know. I want to know how much time I'm wasting by using underpowered equipment to help me justify (read: to my wife) the initial investment in a decent grinder.

Thanks are in order to all. I have been reading these forums for about 2 months and would not have been attempting this if it wasn't for the vast amounts of knowledge that are so freely dispersed here.

[AUBE]

I typically only take a blade to around 40-60grit prior to heat treating, and on a 3-4" blade about 1/8" thick, 1" wide, flat ground to the spine....takes me maybe 5-10mins. After heat treat its another 10-15mins to refine the bevels, and take them to 150ish grit. At that point we go to hand sanding which takes 30-60mins to get to 320grit... depending on the design and whos doing it (I've had my fill of hand sanding, now I have workers that do it for me).

As for forging, I'm not sure of the time. If we use 1/8" 1095 stock and just hammer in the bevels its fairly quick. Starting with 5/16" thick 5160 we get as "drops" from a spring shop...that takes considerably longer to reduce it 1/8" thick. I'm pretty sure I'm not as economical as I could be with the forging....I did stock removal for many years before moving into forging so I'm a faster grinder than forger. To date we only use hammer and anvil...soon we will upgrade to a rolling mill which works great for stock reduction.

[Ray Rogers]

About 15 minutes for me on a small hunter. Yours took so much longer because you used Gator belts. Gator belts are finishing belts and not intended for stock removal. Get a 80 grit ceramic belt and the cutting speed will increase dramatically.

The other thing is that you take the square edge off the steel with an old belt while holding the blade edge down. Then you grind the bevel on a new belt holding the edge up. Do yourself a big favor and scrap any jig you're using to hold the blade. Another favor: unless you are actually sharpening the blade the concept of what exact angle you are grinding should never enter your mind - it doesn't matter...

[Doug Lester]

For rough smithing a blade a lot is going to depend on the anvil and this is something that I didn't learn until I got a good anvil. I started out with a 30 kilo anvil because I needed something that I could put away when I was through working. Or at least I thought I did.

Then I decided that on one was going to run off with a 110 lb so I bought one of those cheap 110 lb Russian made monsters from a seller on Ebay. The face wasn't finished and the hardy hole was 45? off which made it useless for some of my hardy tools.

I finally took the advice of some people and ordered a roughly 4X7X8" block of steel that the seller said weighed 87lbs and, even tough it wasn't heat treated, it was like going from a Dodge Dart to a Lexus. I couldn't believe how much faster it moved metal. I would say that I could do a 4" trailing point blade, which is easier than a straight blade, with a full tang in under a half hour if I stopped talking to myself and payed attention to business.

Moral of the story: A cheap anvil is better than no anvil but you need to get the best anvil that you can afford.

Doug

[damonw81]

Wow! You guys just made my day. < 15min minutes prior to heat treat! That is great, I am going so slow, I thought if i could just cut this down under an hour it would really be worth all the trouble. Now, I absolutely have to get the right tools....and fast. I have spent hours, burning my thumbs, using those Home Depo gator belts for the wrong task...It will be a few months before I can get a grinder.

Do you think a ceramic belt on my little sander will make a difference? Supergrit.com has them for the 4x36 for about $4. I put a 4 x 12 x 1/4" riser on the platten so i could get plunge cuts and that has been working for me. I built the jig because i could hold the blad flat for as long as it takes with my set up. I have another use for the jig...mini vise for filework, which is quite fun and i can do pretty quickly now.

As for the anvil...I think I can get a block like that this winter I have a 150lb maple stump to set it in. Im guessing you strike on the 4x7 side, but could turn it when the edges wear down.
You guys just made my day. With practice I could do 9 - 10 blades in the time i have been "sanding" just one. This sounds too good to be true.

[cbsmith111]

Keep in mind that the people answering these questions have a lot of experience. Just because you get a certain tool I wouldn't expect to magically start turning out beautiful knives in minutes. Everything is slower when you're learning no matter how simple a step it is.

I really think you're too worried about speed at this point. From that I get the impression that what you have in mind is making money. For now I would (and currently am) work on perfecting the basics. Take you're time and get everything as right as you can. If it's like most things speed and efficiency will come naturally with experience.

There's no reason for you to take my word for it, but that's how I see it.

[Doug Lester]

Ok, I think that you have a little misunderstanding here. The only place that a smooth finished blade comes off the anvil is in the movies. We only rough shape the blade on the anvil and establish the preliminary bevels. After that it's it's grinding or filing.

I use Norton Norzon Plus belts starting with 36 grit on my 2X72" belt grinder. They are a ceramic and cut aggressively, hold up well, and are more reasonably priced than the Norton Blaze belts. These are the ones that I use the most of. Unfortunately, they are also the most expensive of the belts that I use, except for the Scotch-Brite belts, but they last for ever. Next I go to a 110 grit, then 220 grit, and then heat treat. I go back to the 220 grit after heat treating and possibly even the the 110 grit if a little unevenness occurs in the blade during heat treating.

When I have everything the way that I want it I refine the scratch pattern with 3M Micron belts in 400 and 600 grit equivalents and apply a satin finish with the Scotch-Brite belt.

After heat treating you have to slow down on the grinding because you have to keep your blade cool. You make a couple of passes, especially with a small blade and then cool it in water. With the 3M Micron belts you need to dry the blade because they're not fond of water. If you want to show a hamon, and you've done everything you need to do to create one, then you skip the Scotch-Brite belt and start hand sanding out to about 2000 grit before you etch, unless you want to go the route of using extremely fine polishing water stones.

There are all sorts of little things that you will be running into that will add to production time. Like all those little touches that make a hand crafted knife different from an assembly line product.

Doug

[ranger1]

I usually take about 20-30 min. But I also go to 400 grit before HT.

[damonw81]

This is exactly the feedback I was looking for. Now I know what is possible if I work hard and use propper tools. Thank you all. I wont try to rush to lightning speed, but this snail pace is quite taxing.
Yes, I would love to make enough money to pay for materials, consumables and equipment (read:belts, band-aids and burn cream)
I keep looking at the blades in the galleries here and get motivated big time. So many of you are world class artisans creating museum pieces that I'm sure are equally brilliant as cutting instruments.
I only get about 5-10 hours a week to work on stuff like this so I want to make the most of it. Patience is my biggest challenge. If I could work a bit faster, I could make more mistakes in a shorter amount of time, thus learn faster. I think I will try grinding some wood slats for practice as was mentioned somewhere before.
Many Thanks to all.

[cbsmith111]

Trust me I'm in the same boat. Probably worse because I do my bevels with hand tools. I also get very limited time in the shop which is making it a very slow learning process. There are things I have tried to rush that would have turned out so much better if I hadn't. When I do mess something up it is devestating because it erases up to 10 hours or more of hand work. Yes you will learn from mistakes, but you will also learn from success which doesn't hurt as much. Good luck from one beginner to another. Look forward to seeing your knives.

[Doug Lester]

Don't go doin' that winky smile about the burn cream and band-aids now. That's serious stuff there. When I started out I though bleeding on your blade was part of conditioning the steel. I was also amazed as to how easy it was to raise a blister with a piece of steel that you had been grinding. You're going to go through a lot of burn cream and band-aids starting out.

[DwaneOliver]

I think I could go from bar stock to a knife looking piece of steel in about 30-45 min. ( this is on the grinder , no hammers involved )
Then it would need holes drilled for pins , another 15 min
Then the thermal cycles and heat treating begin , this can take hours and hours.....

Take your time and teach yourself to do it right , toss the jigs.

HAVE FUN

[ranger1]

Dwane is right. Take your time. actually forget about time. Make a knife , do the best you can. You will have more pride in a wellmade knife that took you a month to complete than an 5 OK knives that you made in the same amount of time. Speed, will come with time.

[rockhound]

I'll weigh-in from the slooooow side....
Currently on my third stock-removal with hand tools (not making knives for profit).
For a 3"-4" blade with a high bevel it takes me about 2hrs per side to rough out the primary bevels. About another 2hrs per side to get them down to #220 by wrapping the files with various grits.
My first two were from ATS-34, not a great steel to work with in my opinion but yielded good results.

This one is precision ground CPM-154CM billet and so much easier to work with. The bastard mill file takes material off in curls with this steel. I'll try 440C precision ground after a couple more knives.

[damonw81]

Rockhound, 2 hours a side with hand tools and elbow grease, thats awesome. Cool pic and a nice smooth belly on that one.
I was approaching this all wrong. You really put your heart and soul into a blade after that much work don't you? I did on my first one and as crude as it is, I love it and carry it everywhere and use it whenever I can. After that one I wanted to be able to make knives for my family members. I showed a friend who said "You should sell these."....That was a foolish thought for me to entertain at this stage. When(If) I put my name on something I want it to be great.
So yes I plan on making mistakes, alot of them. But working slow I can fix many of them before they get out of hand and still end up with something great right?
Example: I messed up a flat grind the other day while trying it freehand.....instead of throwing it out, I slowly turned it into a convex grind, I think it is still worth finishing.